


To Days Gone By.

by CountlessUntruths (KaliCephirot)



Category: How to Train Your Dragon (Movies)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Male-Female Friendship, Past Relationship(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-28
Updated: 2014-12-28
Packaged: 2018-03-04 00:30:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2902766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KaliCephirot/pseuds/CountlessUntruths
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gobber moves around Stoick and Hiccup's house with an easiness and familiarity Valka envies, as she waits for him to tell her more about the twenty years she wasn't there.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Days Gone By.

Drink with me to days gone by  
Sing with me the songs we knew

Gobber moves around Stoick and Hiccup's house with an easiness and familiarity she envies, pouring them both a drink. Valka hasn't drank anything but water in the last twenty years, so when she takes a drink of hers it has her coughing, eyes watering, and Gobber laughs at her.

"I never thought I'd see the day where a drink would be too strong for you, Valka."

"Just give me a few more sips and I'll be good," she says, and it easy to fall back into a viking's bravado. It's not something she wants to do, and she doesn't want to change the subject, no matter how much Gobber wants to. She gives a smaller sip of the drink before putting the glass down, looking at him as she waits.

Gobber shifts on his sit, uncomfortable.

"Well... there's not much to be said, really."

She smiles a bit. "Over twenty years, and there's not much?"

He scratches the back of his neck. Valka remembers how, when they were children, he could never lie to her.

"Well, you know, the usual. Ish. Stoick, he... he was devastated, when he thought you were dead. And he had Hiccup to take care of, but you know how it was, for him--"

"The village first," they both chorus, giving a soft (and sad) laugh. Gobber scratches at the table with the hook he is wearing. "Good ol' Stoic.k Anyway, that's when I started helping him with Hiccup, so he wouldn't go crazy. With my arm and my leg, there weren't many actual voyages I could comfortably go and when my da died, someone needed to take over the smithing, and it did give me a chance to take care of the lad."

"And that's why he favors metal instead of wood, like Stoick?" she deduces, thinks of her son's leg, takes notice of Gobber's wooden leg, remembers the days after Gobber lost his legs, the terrible fever that she and Stoick had feared would steal their friend away. The angry, upset way Stoick had been then makes Valka think that she can, maybe, imagine Stoick behaved the days after she disappeared. Once Gobber had been better, Stoick had brought him the wood for his leg, part of the main post of his very own ship for his leg.  


Gobber grins at that. "Hiccup's talented. He took interest in it since he was little and I liked teaching him. He became my apprentince when he was twelve years old, you know. Could barely lift the hammer with those twigs he used to call arms, but he worked hard, which I appreciated. I did not appreciate the number of times he almost exploded, mind you. In retrospective it was good since I already knew how to work with dragons, but at the time... eh."

There is a pang that she's getting used to, the bitterness of thinking that she should have been there but, just as she gets it, she lets it go: wishing for things to be different is an useless wish to have, so instead she focuses on the way Gobber seems wistful and melancholic and Valka makes a choice.

"And when did you two fall in love?"

Gobber doesn't deny it, which she appreciates, doesn't flush or look embarrassed. He seems nostalgic and amused as he takes a long drink from his cup. "Me? When we were children and Stoick gave me that first black eye and we became friends. Him? I have no idea. When Hiccup was ten he got a terrible fever-- most of the children did during that winter season. We'd be taking turns until his fever broke and I... I love the lad, you know? Like my own. Not as if I'd replace either you or Stoick, I just mean, if I had had children of my own, I probably--"

"I know what you mean, old friend," Valka says, her hand covering Gobber's, unsurprised about his confession about his own love. It had always been there, she thinks, and had she put a little more attention when she lived there, Valka knows she would have seen it. "So the children were sick and Hiccup as well. And?"

"And, you know... I don't know what he saw," Gobber shrugs, helplessly. "When I went out, we kissed. And-- probably traumatized Hiccup for life when he stood up from his bed to get a drink and he took a look at us. We kind of convinced him it had been a fever delirium, you know."

She laughs, delighted, when Gobber blushes, squeezing his hand again. Gobber gives her a sheepish smile before he sobbers up. "It wasn't to replace you. Stoick, he... there wasn't a day he didn't miss you in those long twenty years. I did too, my friend. You know that, right?"

"Of course I do," Valka nods, because it's the truth. Once she decided not to go back, she knew that there was a chance that Stoic would love someone else, that he would marry again... and that Hiccup would grow up calling a different woman 'mother'. Where there was bitterness at the thought, at first, it had become in acceptance and even gratitude to the unknown person who would have taken care of her family. That gratitude grows tenfold now she knows it was her friend but so does the sadness and grief of Stoick's death.

"So, we both lost a husband," Valka says, softly, this pain she had suffered twenty years ago when she gave her family up feels like a new wound again. "But you lost a husband you lived with for twenty years."

Gobber looks sad for a moment before shrugs and offers her a smile and he moves his big, rough, familiar hand to cover hers.

"Pain isn't a competition. Let's leave it that we both lost 'im and that's that, alright?"

Her throat tight, her eyes stinging with unfallen tears, Valka nods, once. Gobber smiles at her for a moment, all soft and sad, before he clears his throat.

"That settled, I just rememberd a lot of anecdotes of Stoick and baby Hiccup. Do you want me to tell you the first time Stoick changed Hiccup's soiled clothes?"

Valka laughs, unbiden and unexpected, her eyes still misty, and she nods.

"I would love to."


End file.
